


In The Bleak Midwinter

by LydianNode



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Mourning, THIS HAS SOME TRIGGERING ELEMENTS SO READ WITH CAUTION, tw: suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 20:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21022037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LydianNode/pseuds/LydianNode
Summary: Brian has often told the story of the day he was so depressed that he considered driving off a bridge but "something" stopped him. This is a fictionalised account of that terrible day.There's no escape from the leaden sky, no escape from the weight of sorrow that presses down, down, down until he can scarcely draw breath. That weight is enough to send him over the edge of his sanity.Over the edge of this bridge.





	In The Bleak Midwinter

December 24, 1991

Brian sees himself in black and white. 

All of the colours in his life have been leached out in the days and weeks since Freddie died. Every day he finds more and more white strands in his black curls, and his hands are soberingly thin and pale. Even his eyes look grey and washed-out now that he has no more tears to shed, all the colour drained away until his irises are as blank as the eyes on a Roman statue. 

He dreams of the band in black and white. 

They filmed their last two videos in black and white, trying to camouflage Freddie's failing health, trying to keep his secret close to their aching hearts. What the public was spared, the band was not. Despite that, when Brian dreams of Montreux, he is glad to relive those agonising days. It's worth the pain just to have Freddie with him once more. 

He dreams of his father in black and white. 

Like the childhood photos on the walls in his childhood home (all black and white; colour film and printing is far too dear), the colours fade from true black to sepia to muted grey. Brian is a little boy again, shellacking his wild hair, trying to tame his wild heart. Even in his dreams, he's a disappointment. 

He dreams of his children in black and white. 

He knows the colours of their hair, of their eyes, of their cheeks. But in his dreams, they are little ghosts crying out for a daddy who has abandoned them. When he tries to hold their hands, their translucent silver fingers slip right through his. Some nights are even worse, the nights when Jimmy turns his back on him, Louisa—who looks the most like poor, betrayed Chrissy—weeps into her dimpled hands, and tiny Emily shies away from him because she doesn't know who he is anymore. 

He drives down streets decked for the holidays, but to him they're black and white. 

The colours of Christmas used to enchant him. Now they're just a slightly less somber shade of grey. The lights over Oxford Street don't twinkle anymore, and the lights in the sky, his life-long constants, seem covered by dreary grey mist. 

Brian is driving aimlessly, lost in the howling vastness of a grief too sharp to be assuaged. There's no music playing in the car. He can't risk turning on the radio and hearing Freddie's voice, not in this dismal mindset. He doesn't want to play his own music_._ Why should he? He's a fraud, a huckster, a talentless Jimi wannabe. Didn't all the music papers tell him so? 

In the early days he'd asked his friends if they agreed with the harsh reviews of his skills. John rolled his eyes and said to get his head out of his arse. Roger threatened to snip all his strings if he didn't fucking shut up about his playing. 

But not Freddie. Freddie had taken Brian's hands in his and said the perfect words: "You are what I want. You are my Hendrix, and we will do this thing."_  
_

Freddie. 

He can't stop thinking about Freddie. Freddie, of the midnight hair and infinitely sweet brown eyes, of the polished, golden skin and outlandish red and yellow outfits. That Freddie isn't here anymore. There's just an urn somewhere full of grey bone fragments pulverised to ash. That's all there is of Freddie's earthly presence, so colourful a life blanched until nothing is left but grey grey, grey. 

He sees the landscape outside of London as a cavalcade of dusty grey trees. As a child he used to get impossibly sad at the last scene of "The Wizard of Oz" because Dorothy had known such vivid colours but she'll have to settle for the bland, monochrome Kansas skies. 

He used to weep then, and he weeps now. 

There's no escape from the leaden sky, no escape from the weight of sorrow that presses down, down, down until he can scarcely draw breath. That weight is enough to send him over the edge of his sanity. 

Over the edge of this bridge. 

_No star can light our way in this cloud of dark and fear._

The edge of the bridge beckons. 

_Don't try suicide - nobody gives a damn.  
_

Brian is a worn-out, grey husk of man. Useless as a son, a husband, a father, a friend. His father had died disappointed in him. His ex-wife will never forgive him even as she raises their three children. Their children. They're young; they will forget him in time. His lover is being dragged through the gutter press because of him. His friend, his beloved Freddie...well, they had all failed to look after him, but Brian takes it most to heart, knows that the delights of rock stardom had led him to fail Freddie. 

He hasn't checked on John in weeks, has instructed Anita to tell Roger that he's "out" when the phone rings. He's a coward, a chickenshit, useless coward. 

The edge of the bridge beckons. Freddie beckons. 

_Just close your pretty eyes and you can be with me.  
_

Brian laughs, a hollow, painful sound. These words he and Freddie had written have turned out to be prophecies. 

The edge of the bridge beckons. An end to the drab, colourless world beckons. 

_Dear friend, goodbye._

Brian looks around at the bleak surroundings. There are no other cars, no people about to be forced to witness this moment. He reverses the car and starts going forward again, oddly hoping that the car won't land on any fish. 

His life doesn't flash before his eyes. Instead, he sees other people's faces. 

John, well acquainted with grief, pale and stoic. Roger, pounding a wall and cursing Brian's name. Anita, weeping into one of his shirts. Jimmy, Louisa, and Emily playing half-heartedly as Chrissy goes over the details of his will with Jim Beach. His mother's thin hands caressing a tombstone commemorating the double loss of husband and son. 

Brian steps hard on the accelerator and wonders if there are colours in the afterlife. 

_We'll be seeing them soon._

Something stops him. Someone. A voice that seems to come from within his very heart. 

"Brimi. Darling, no. You need to be here." 

He stomps the brake hard enough to twist his ankle. Hard enough to stop the car inches away from the guardrail. Hard enough to feel the shoulder harness bruise his sternum. 

"Freddie?" he gasps. 

It can't be. Freddie's been dead for a month, his ashes gone cold, his stolen vivacity leaving behind a hopelessly uninspiring world.

"You need to be here." Sadder this time, but still firm. 

"Why?" Brian asks, his should-be-dead voice thin and sad. 

"You need to be here." Softer now, a hushed murmur in the cold winter wind. 

_All dead, all dead, take me back again._

There are tears now, and the sobs make his chest ache where the strap has left a bruise. Brian looks down and sees the flesh turning from red to purple. 

Colour. 

His hands are chapped, pink from the cold and from gripping the steering wheel too tightly. 

Colour. 

A ginger tabby cat sits on the bonnet of the car, peering inside, gold eyes wide and anxious. 

Colour. 

Brian breathes in, takes the bluish cold air into his lungs. 

"I'm going to be all right, Fred," he says to the cat, who gives him one last look and then bounds off into the bushes. 

Carefully, Brian backs up the car. He looks over at the brown wood of the bridge supports, at the dark teal waters below, at silver fish darting in and out of the ripples. 

Colour. 

He thinks back on what he was so close to doing, to the cruel trick fate would have him play upon his loved ones. Children without a father, mother without a son, brothers-by-choice with half their family taken from them. 

Brian turns the car toward London. He stops at a little store along the way and buys trinkets for his children: a bronze telescope for Jimmy, a silver fairy wand for Louisa, a scarlet ribbon for Emily's dark curls. He stops at an off-licence to buy a bottle of champagne. Moët and Chandon with a bright green ribbon around its neck, perfect. 

Colour. So much colour. 

He's brave enough to live now but not brave enough to face Anita, so he doesn't quite go into the city. He pulls up in a familiar drive and rings the doorbell. 

Roger answers. His hair is gold and his eyes are the blue of heaven. "Thank CHRIST!" he exclaims as he pulls Brian by the sleeve and drags him into the house. "You dropped off the face of the earth without a word, we're all scared out of our wits!" 

"Sorry, Rog. Got lost in my thoughts, is all." 

The blue-green of the Christmas tree draws his attention. Pine and popcorn fill his nostrils. Roger tugs him into a rough embrace. Senses alight, Brian finally starts to see his world in colour. 

_Mind you grow a little wiser, little better every day._

He just might survive this bleak midwinter.

**Author's Note:**

> Freddie really did say to Brian that he was his (Jimi) Hendrix and they "would do this thing."
> 
> Song lyrics appearing here are all by Brian May except where listed:  
"Some Day, One Day"  
"Don't Try Suicide" - Freddie Mercury  
"Teo Torriate"  
"White Queen (As It Began)"  
"Nothin' But Blue" (written the day before Freddie died)  
"All Dead, All Dead"  
"Keep Yourself Alive"
> 
> I have a Tumblr for my writing stuff - come say hello!  
https://lydiascribbling.tumblr.com/


End file.
